Taking Pamoja Online DP Courses

[NotAProcrastinator]

Hello,

I wanted to ask for your evaluation of the online programs of Pamoja, specifically those on philosophy and economics. What are its strengths and weaknesses; how supportive are the teachers; what are the additional important things that you can tell me? I am a pre-IB student planning to take these courses online, even though I am not so sure of taking economics. Anything will be helpful.

Thanks

 

Edited February 5, 2018 by NotAProcrastinator

[Guest]

The pros of doing Pamoja is that everything is really organized. You have the whole semester planned out so if you feel like the work distribution is too slow you can work ahead of time. Teachers are also really nice as well, although mine was. They give good feedbacks, there are live lessons and you can Skype them to ask them some questions, but then again, like classroom teachers, the behaviours of teachers with you is just very dependable. You get holidays like normal school days. There are also going to be some mock paper exams just like every other class, so you might want to organize your notes well 

The cons are that there isn't much interaction between students at Pamoja if you are looking for people to be social with. There are also not a lot of possibilities of you interacting with other people because there are not many group discussions. It can be sometimes overwhelming for some reason to do online courses because it requires you to be independent and work all on your own and adjust your time. 

In my opinion, I found taking online courses quite doable and not that difficult. 

[VeronicaG]

I took HL Economics on Pamoja.

Pros: I could do the work literally whenever I wanted. I normally did it all on the weekend since I knew I was busy during the week. That sort of flexibility was awesome.

Cons: I got a super bad teacher. She really didn't care at all about her online class and it showed in the way she interacted, marked and gave feedback. I probably taught myself 95% of the content because she never bothered to post any lessons or any resources. Whenever a live lesson was posted, the timing never worked out for me. Also, group projects are a pain when the members are in far away places like Canada, the UK, New Zealand, etc. It's really easy to get away with doing absolutely no work in a group. I've definitely submitted my fair share of 'group' projects solo. Honestly, I think the class gave up when they saw how disengaged the teacher was.

 

However, I would definitely recommend Pamoja and I was still able to get a pretty great score. It all comes down to how motivated you are!